


Flames in my heart and a fire on my street

by Etalice



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Architectural Infraction Form, But also kind of angsty?, Drarropoly 2.0 - A Drarry Game/Fest, Explosions, Fire, I Don't Even Know, Kissing in a half-burning street, M/M, Magical architecture, Ministry forms, Misguided attempts at getting attention, POV Third Person Omniscient, Team Activity, Team Snitch, Very chatty narrator, but I have zero regrets, kind of cracky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22090525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etalice/pseuds/Etalice
Summary: Everything smells of smoke, as they kiss in a half-burning street, hungry hands fisted in each other’s shirts and robes and hair. Everything around them is burning, and still, they kiss and kiss and kiss, and the world could be ending, they wouldn’t stop kissing because, reader, they’ve waited so long for this moment to finally come, they’ve wanted this for so long, and they’ve been so ashamed and afraid of wanting it, and it’s here, oh, reader, it’s finally here.Harry Potter's in love. Draco Malfoy is also in love.  Jemima Graves, Ministry Official and Qualified Specialist in Architecture Legality Assessment, tries to clean up the messes that arise from both these facts and catches on fire several times.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 16
Kudos: 91
Collections: Drarropoly 2.0 - A Drarry Game/Fest





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With all my thanks to my lovely team mate [Randoyoyo](randoyoyo) who did a wonderful and quick job of the beta.
> 
> And as always, [Andithiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andithiel/pseuds/Andithiel/) is the kindest and loveliest friend I could ever ask for.
> 
> The prompt for this fic is the Architectural Infractor Report pictured in chapter 2.

Once was already more than enough, and twice was ridiculous, but three times? Three times, Jemima Graves decides, three times is nothing short of an affront!

And she is not wrong, reader, but this is not where this story should begin, is it? No, if you are to share her anger, if you are to partake in her righteous outrage, we ought to start at the beginning. We ought to start with Harry Potter.

Wait. 

Let us start before that. Let us start with a quiet shop in a bustling wizarding street. Let us call that shop “Patrician Potions”. It is small inside, spartan but tastefully decorated. If you were to ring the delicate bronze bell sitting on the cold, smooth, black marble of the counter, a blond man would appear and ask you in a calm voice how he can help you. But let us not do that, reader. Let us not bother him—he’ll have trouble enough when the story finally starts in earnest. 

Come, let us walk out of the shop, let us consider the shop next door.

The facade is bright orange and gaudy yellow, and it is a stark contrast to the sleek dark wood of the “Patrician Potions.” There is a large sign, running the full length of the building. It says “Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes.” If we were to go inside, reader, we’d find children, excitedly holding up novelty objects, and teenagers, looking for the next prank to play on unsuspecting friends or authority figures. If we stayed there long enough, carefully covering our ears every time someone came too close to the display of screaming yo-yos, we’d spot a redhead, too, frantically running around with armfuls of boxes and toys.

This is what we’d see if we went inside, but let us not, reader, for the story does not begin in the shop. The story begins in the office on the first floor, with a dark-haired young man looking longingly out the window. The young man’s name is Harry Potter. He does not work here, not really. He’s agreed to help out because his friend Ron, who does work here, is on Paternity leave, but this does not matter to our story. No, what really matters to our story is that Harry Potter, who is currently sitting in an office on the first floor of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes at a desk full of bills and tax forms and paperwork, is desperately in love with one Draco Malfoy, Master Potioneer and owner of “Patrician Potions.”

What does it have to do with Jemima Graves and the Unthinkable Affront, you ask? Hush, dear reader. We are getting to it.

* * *

The first time the exploding extension explodes, it is an accident. 

When Jemima Graves, Ministry Official and Qualified Specialist in Architecture Legality Assessment is called to the scene, her report goes thusly: “George Weasley did not mean to invent the exploding extension, and Harry Potter did not mean to set it up. It is all a big misunderstanding, and I have been assured it will not happen again.” There is a note spellotaped to the bottom of the page, requiring a new set of official ministry robes on the grounds of hers being charred black and burned to a crisp in several areas. 

It might have ended there, reader, but it doesn’t because in the aftermath of the explosion Draco Malfoy comes out of his shop.

Let us think, dear reader, about what it means for these two men to cross paths at that instant in time. One is desperately in love and spends a solid hour or five every day staring through the window at the object of his affection. The other is also desperately in love, albeit in a very different way. The other doesn’t feel like he’s worthy of affection or attention at all, so love turns his heart into a painful pincushion, turns his skin into Armenian paper and his bones into chalk.

One man reaches out to the other, with bright smiles and loud words, and the other recoils for fear he’ll break apart entirely. And then, there’s only one man in that street, alone in the soft heat of an early summer evening with a smile that feels like a knife gash across his face. And all the while, Jemima Graves writes her report and thinks about the charred holes in her robes and doesn’t notice anything at all. 

* * *

The second time the exploding extension explodes, it is not an accident.

The second time the exploding extension explodes, Harry Potter has been sitting at his desk and thinking about Draco Malfoy for longer than he cares to admit. In fact, Harry hasn’t been able to think about anything but Draco since the first explosion, seventy-four hours, fifty-one minutes and twelve seconds ago. And all the while, the blinds to the office of “Patrician Potions” have been closed, and Harry thinks he’ll go entirely mad if they stay closed any longer. 

Were Harry Potter a different person, reader, a more emotionally healthy person, perhaps, he’d simply resolve the issue by knocking on Draco’s door. By inviting him for a drink, maybe. By ringing the bell on the counter and requesting a potion, even. But you must understand: things are not that simple for Harry Potter. 

If you were to ask him what he feels for Draco Malfoy, he’d tell you he hasn’t thought about him since the end of the war. It’d be a lie, of course, but this is what he would tell you anyway. 

What you must understand, dearest reader, is that Harry Potter doesn’t want to think of himself as being in love with Draco Malfoy. There are many reasons for that, many complicated reasons, some of them having to do with how the two of them were enemies for the longest time and all of them having to do with the fact that Harry Potter has been steadfastly refusing to take a good look at his emotions since the end of the war.

And this, reader, is why Harry Potter decides that the thing where half the shop explodes and there’s a pissed-off Ministry official taking notes about everything and he has to sign at the bottom of several incomprehensible forms? It’s better than another second not seeing Malfoy, and it’s the only way he can go about it.

When Jemima Graves makes it to the scene of the explosion, it’s four in the morning and half the street is on fire. As she steps gingerly over the flames to inspect the faulty charm-work attached to what was once a gaudy yellow and orange facade but is currently a jumble of charred wood and a thick layer of soot, her left shoe catches on fire. If Jemima Graves were a different person, a less professional person, perhaps, she’d decide this is not worth her time. She’d take her shoe off and throw it at the burnt facade, she’d promptly Apparate back to her own pristine home to lie down in her soft bed and leave this awful, flammable mess to be dealt with in the morning. But Jemima Graves is not that person, so she settles for casting an Aguamenti at her feet and pointing an accusing finger at a tired, confused red-headed man in happy-hippogriffs pyjamas.

“Talk to me,” Harry Potter tells Draco Malfoy in the background.

They’re standing at a safe distance from the last dying flames. Harry is wearing a ratty pair of jeans and the Holyhead Harpies T-shirt Ginny gave him last Christmas; Draco is wearing impeccably pressed gabardine trousers in an elegant shade of slate-grey and a soft linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

He doesn’t answer.

“Talk to me,” Harry says again as an ember falls on Jemima's shoulder and her hair promptly catches on fire too.

If he could, reader, Draco would talk to him then. If he knew how to, he’d take Harry’s hands in his own and tell him that he’s been waiting for this moment for months and years, for decades maybe. If he were a different person, he’d kiss Harry right there and then, in the rubble and the flames, and it’d be an ode to the fact they did more than just survive a war: they survived the awful, fragile, brittle kind of quiet that came after it, too.

But if Draco were a different person, reader, it’d be a different story. It may be lucky then that Draco only knows how to be himself, just as Harry only knows to set things on fire, just as Jemima Graves only knows to do her job when everything is burning down around her. And so, reader, because everyone only knows how to be themselves, things aren’t different and our story unfolds. Slow. Strange. Beautiful.

“Or what, you’ll continue burning things down?” Draco replies because he doesn’t know how to express all the things that live in his chest.

Jemima Graves swoops in before Harry can think of a good answer. She needs eyewitness accounts. She’s soaked, and the left side of her head is covered in dark patches of burn-frizzled hair. Both of her shoes make soft sloop-gush sounds as she walks, but still she needs them to fill in form 562-37 A. She also needs a signature, if you please, here, and here, and here.

Her report, when she turns it in the next morning, does not state that the explosion was an accident. It is filled with sharp words and she’s underlined the words “highly illegal” three times in blue ink.

* * *

The extension explodes again little more than twenty-four hours after that.

“Yes,” Harry tells Draco as soon as he rushes out of his shop.

“Yes, what, Potter?” Draco’s voice is half-drowned out by the loud blare of the fire alarm charms.

“Yes, I will continue burning things down until you talk to me,” Harry yells. Charred pieces of wood are falling all around them. Gold-bright flames are licking at the once-orange walls. Jemima Graves has just Apparated a mere handful of metres from them and is staring at the half-burning street with a face full of disbelief and exhaustion. 

“I’ll burn this entire street if I damn well have to,” Harry continues over the sound of sirens filling the air. “I’ll burn this entire town if that’ll make you talk to me because I can’t take the silence anymore. I can’t take the silence that covered the world after the war, I can’t take not being in your life, I can’t take not having your name on my life every single day because I—”

Wait. Let us stop here, reader. Can you feel it? This is the moment where everything finally falls into place. Come. Look closely. Look at the way Harry’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly as he realises he’s been in love with Draco for longer than he remembers, look at the way his mouth hangs open and empty of words. And look, reader, look at Draco’s face, too. Look at the soft light of hope behind his eyes, look at his careful armour of distance fissuring like ice shelves in the summer.

“—I love you,” Harry finishes in a whisper.

A beat.

“I love you,” Harry says again, with tears in his eyes.

Draco kisses him.

Everything smells of smoke, as they kiss in a half-burning street, hungry hands fisted in each other’s shirts and robes and hair. Everything around them is burning, and still, they kiss and kiss and kiss, and the world could be ending, they wouldn’t stop kissing because, reader, they’ve waited so long for this moment to finally come, they’ve wanted this for so long, and they’ve been so ashamed and afraid of wanting it, and it’s here, oh, reader, it’s finally here.

They’re still kissing when Jemima approaches them with requests for eyewitness accounts and signatures. She stops in front of them.

They do not stop kissing.

Jemima Graves clears her throat. She riffles through her forms for good measure.

They do not stop kissing.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Jemima Graves says after a while. “There are some forms I need you to fill in if you don’t mind.”

They still do not stop kissing.

And this is when Jemima Graves snaps.

You have to understand her, reader. She’s stepped through flames three separate times in less than one week to do her job. She’s sacrificed two pairs of robes, one pair of shoes and half a head of hair to this disaster of an architectural nightmare, and she just needs a couple of signatures. She just needs a couple of eyewitness accounts before she can be on her way, but she can’t even get that, can she? She can’t even ask for the idiots who keep blowing things up every other day to comply with her reasonable professional requests as she cleans their messes up for them. She can’t even ask them to look at her, and—oh Merlin, are they moaning?

* * *

When Jemima’s report ends up on her boss’ desk, for the first time in Jemima’s long career, it is not properly filled in. She’s taken liberties with the Infractor’s name and she’s got the name of the business all wrong. There’s not even a violation code. Instead, her writing sprawls over the entire page. The word “third” is heavily underlined and several words are written in capital letters - words like “EXPLODES” and “ME” and “NOT ANYMORE.” Next to Jemima’s report, on her boss’ desk is her Official Ministry Badge and a set of half-burnt Ministry Robes.

So what becomes of Jemima, you ask? Well, reader, if you were to visit Jemima in, say, a year, you’d find her in a field in the Andes. She’d be wearing a pair of corduroy overalls and bright yellow wellies. Her hair would be long, flowing down her back, and she’d be carefully feeding a bottle of milk to a young orphaned Mooncalf. Rest assured, reader, that she is happy in this new life of hers, far away from burning streets and illegal extensions and report forms. And rest assured that the other protagonists of this story are happy too, as they learn to live and love and trust and to not set anything on fire.


	2. Chapter 2




End file.
